St John's Cathedral, Brisbane and the Anzac Legend

One of the soldiers tried to embrace Parkinson; when she fought him, he plunged his bayonet into her side. Another soldier bayoneted Sister Hayman in the throat. Then their bodies were thrown into the graves. Also bayoneted was a local student who had tried to protect them. The last of the Anglican missionaries to die was the Reverend John Barge, a medical worker specialising in tropical diseases, who was killed in New Britain, off the coast of New Guinea, in October 1943. The window in the South Transept of the Cathedral, which depicts a nurse standing next to a Papuan in native dress, commemorates the four women missionaries who were killed in Papua including Mavis Parkinson, who was only 27 when she died. Parkinson came from Ipswich in Queensland. She was a kindergarten teacher at the Gona Mission and reputedly a very able one. The inclusion of her name in the Cathedral window is a reminder of the sacrifice and devotion to duty that these Australian missionary workers displayed. The Junior School at Ipswich Grammar School in Queensland is named after her.

Mavis Parkinson, the Ipswich teacher murdered by the Japanese invaders of New Guinea.

Anglican Board of Mission

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